The Photographers Who Walk Into the California Fires

Geyserville, Calif.

For 12 hours the night the Kincade fire started, photographer Noah Berger kept his Nissan Xterra running. In the fire zone, Mr. Berger never turns it off. There might not be enough oxygen to start it again.

Mr. Berger drove through blood-orange smoke banks and flame-lined country roads in Northern California wine country, snapping photos for the Associated Press. In the back seat, cameras sat on a packed fire shelter—essentially an aluminum foil coffin the freelancer could climb into as a last resort attempt to survive a burn over.

Stories like this come standard for this group of shooters who deliver the most dramatic shots of California’s escalating wildfires. They race to the far corners of the state from June to November to capture the first—and often most consequential—hours of a fire.

“I got hooked on the experience of being out here,” Mr. Berger says. “It strips off the mundane layers of life.”

When multiple fires break out around the state, they skip from one to the next. Their photos appear in the world’s largest newspapers and magazines and have won top photography awards.

Noah Berger, early in the morning in Sonoma County, Calif., at the Kincade fire, which broke out on Oct. 24. Photo: Stephen Lam

In reality, the craft requires Mr. Berger and other freelancers to slog through months of monotonous but better-paying work for corporate clients. (Their day rates for the news assignments are often between $250 and $600.) It also strains family life at home. Much of those months off, Mr. Berger says, are spent anticipating the next season.

Mr. Berger already had a sense of what was ahead back in May. “It’s coming; I felt a dry leaf crinkle under my foot this morning when walking the dog,” he said then.

The Call Arrives

Five months later, northerly winds whipped across the ridges above Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley the night the Kincade fire broke out. Winds have fanned the fire into one of the state’s most destructive blazes of the season.

With bags already packed, Mr. Berger left his home in Alameda, an island in San Francisco Bay, within 20 minutes of receiving an alert on his phone about a new fire.

By midnight, Mr. Berger drove up a winding rural road in wine country mountains. He met up with usual fire-shooting partners, Josh Edelson, a freelancer for Agence France-Presse, and Justin Sullivan, a staff photographer with Getty Images.

The fire gained steam. A scanner picking up radio chatter between nearby firefighters crackled: houses on fire down the mountain. The crew, with this reporter following, began a perilous drive around curves obscured by smoke while flaming stumps framed the road. Heat from flames could be felt inside the car. Fire burst out of a manhole.

Mr. Berger jumped out to photograph the first moments a home with a bench press in the yard caught fire. He retreated when the home’s propane tank shot ignited gas into the air like a blow torch.

He ran down the street and snapped photos of a burning house, an image that would run on the front page of The Wall Street Journal a day later.

Photos: Inside the Fire ZoneA sampling of photographs taken by Noah Berger and Josh Edelson of California’s wildfires

Freelance photographer Noah Berger’s image of flames from a backfire consuming a hillside as firefighters battle the Maria Fire in Santa Paula, Calif., on Nov. 1.

Noah Berger/Associated Press

1 of 11

•••••

“You push deeper [into the fire zone] and realize it’s not as dangerous as you thought. So you push further and further,” Mr. Berger said about his evolution into high-stakes fire photography.

As the sun rose over Sonoma County, Mr. Berger jogged through rows of grapevines. From behind a trellis, he photographed a sprawling estate burning to the ground. Tall flames rained ash into a swimming pool and a bocce court smoldered.

In the six years Mr. Berger has shot wildfires, he has become a recognizable figure at wildfires and known affectionately to some as Big Man. At 6-foot-6, he sports a custom-made, extra-long yellow fire jacket. Two cameras dangle from his shoulders. He smokes cigarettes almost nonstop at fires.

Share Your Thoughts

How have you, your friends or family been affected by the California fires? Join the conversation below.

This year, Mr. Berger and two other photographers were Pulitzer Prize finalists for breaking news photography. Their photos of the 2018 fire season included a shot by Mr. Berger of five men carrying a body bag through haze in the destroyed town of Paradise.

Mr. Berger, 45, has a way of maintaining a sense of humor even when witnessing something awful. In an evacuated neighborhood near the Kincade fire, a firefighter wheeled trash bins to the curb to clear a path for a hose crew.

“Big Man!” the firefighter said when he saw Mr. Berger standing on the lawn.

“You taking out the trash?” Mr. Berger bantered.

“Like a normal day, man,” the firefighter said before rushing off.

As news coverage of wildfires intensifies and more news crews flock to fire zones, Mr. Berger sometimes winces at the spectacle he acknowledges he’s a part of.

“It feels a little more icky than it did a few years ago, like it’s an attraction now,” Mr. Berger said. Most of all, he worries that rookie photojournalists and television news crews covering this story don’t get the importance of staying out of firefighters’ way.

Mr. Edelson captions photographs on hood the car at the Saddleridge fire. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon Conflicting Demands

At the Kincade fire, the morning weather calmed the blaze and Mr. Berger and his colleagues regrouped along a country road. Stephen Lam, there on assignment for Thomson Reuters and a regular in Mr. Berger’s crew, showed up after hours of radio silence, which had been worrying Mr. Berger.

Mr. Edelson, the AFP photographer, agonized about having to leave to shoot executive headshots for San Francisco software company Salesforce. com.

“I emailed the client and said ‘I’m literally surrounded by fire,’ ” Mr. Edelson said. He estimates corporate work pays 10 times what working a fire does. “I only do that work so I can be out here.”

Mr. Edelson’s photos from the night ran in the Journal, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Obsessively chasing wildfires for six months each year has become a point of contention back at home for Messrs. Berger and Edelson. The Kincade fire’s flare-up on Oct. 27 came the day before Mr. Edelson’s wedding anniversary. Torn between the fire and a trip to Santa Catalina Island with his wife, Mr. Edelson pulled an all nighter in the fire zone before flying to Southern California to board a boat the same day.

Mr. Berger worries his lifestyle is contributing to his 9-year-old son’s anxiety issues.

Still, the shooters’ passion for the craft is only deepening. To improve, they study others’ bodies of work. For instance, Santa Rosa Press Democrat staffer Kent Porter’s expertise in reading weather and topography puts him in perfect locations, Mr. Berger says.

Stuart Palley is a Newport Beach, Calif.-based photographer and buddy of Mr. Berger’s who has also covered this story. (His work has also been used by the Journal.)

Mr. Berger, right, comforts Mr. Edelson, center, after he saw deputies searching for remains from a burned-out home in Paradise, Calif., in November 2018. Mr. Sullivan is at left. Photo: Stephen Lam

“There’s an element of time being suspended. I feel in the moment,” Mr. Palley said at the Saddleridge fire near Los Angeles in early October.

Mr. Berger spent about a week at the Kincade fire—eating, sleeping, editing photos and socializing with other photographers, all from his car.

When new fires erupted near L.A., Mr. Berger drove across the state to them. Mr. Edelson and his wife cut their anniversary trip short and he joined Mr. Berger.

But soon, when the rains return and firefighters contain the last of the state’s fires, the men will call fire season quits. That’s sometimes the hard part. “You come back and hear people talking about their prosaic lives,” Mr. Berger says. “But your mind is still out there.”